Archive for the ‘Seton Hill’ Category

Shortly after moving to Israel in 1975, Sister Gemma Del Duca began to realize how important the Holocaust is to the Jewish people.

A native of Greensburg, a Sister of Charity and former chair of the history department at Seton Hill University, Sister Gemma said her growing awareness of the depth of their feelings reminded her of the words of Catholic [Talmudist] prelate, Father Isaac Jacob, OSB, who worked to build the Benedictine Center of Tel Gamaliel in [Counterfeit] Israel and stressed the importance of educating people about the Holocaust and the need for developing a dialogue with the Jewish people.

She took the idea to university president JoAnne Boyle. Then, shortly afterward, Pope John Paul II visited the United States and urged Catholics to recognize the significance of the Holocaust and “to promote the necessary historical and religious studies on this event which concerns the whole of humanity today.”

His words gave even more impetus to Sister Gemma’s desire to establish the center, which has a mission to “counter anti-Semitism and foster Catholic-Jewish relations by making the fruits of Holocaust scholarship accessible to educators at every level, especially to those working in Catholic colleges and universities in the United States.”

The education center was established in 1987, and Sister Gemma returned to Israel as the university’s liaison, making connections with Jewish institutions such as Yad Vashem, the Isaac Jacob Institute for [Talmudic] Law and Hebrew University.

The center is now headed by Sister Lois Sculco.

Sister Gemma continues to travel back and forth to Israel to further Holocaust education and serves as the university’s representative in its cooperative program with the Yad Vashem World Center for Holocaust Research, Education, Documentation and Commemoration.

Sister Gemma has a doctorate in Ibero-American studies from the University of New Mexico; a master’s of sacred sciences in theology from the Pontifical Institute, Regina Mundi, Rome; and a Bachelor of Arts in history from Seton Hill.

Now celebrating its 25th anniversary, the conference, she said, seeks to enhance Catholic-Jewish understanding by “educating the educators” in the hope of reaching the whole of humanity.

The Ethel LeFrak Holocaust Education Conference Endowment Fund supports the conference’s speakers and sponsors its art, music and film events.

“Together with deeply committed scholars, we will look at future challenges in the study and teaching of the Shoah, the Hebrew word for Holocaust, in a fast-moving, changing world, where technology can dictate political, economic and social changes,” Sister Gemma said. “The study of the Holocaust has much to teach about the danger of dictatorship; about the necessity to be guided by religious, ethical principles and universal human values; and about the difficulty and importance of maintaining human dignity in extreme situations.”

If some wealthy Catholics were to donate millions of dollars (yeah, right!) to Yeshiva University earmarked for the construction of a center for remembrance of the Bolshevik/Soviet Holocaust against Russian, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Armenian and other Christian ethnic groups and how the rabbis’ genocidal,racist teachings paved the road to that Holocaust via Moses Hess and Freemasonry, they would surely build it in the spirit of reciprocity and fairness … wouldn’t they?

In truth, even that wouldn’t bring parity which isn’t even desirable to begin with. ‘Jewish’-Catholic relations is completely irredeemable. A total fraud.

The conference, held every three years, is for teachers and faculty members, mainly at Catholic schools. The intent is to enhance Catholic-Jewish understanding.

The fund will provide annual scholarships for students studying the Holocaust and related subjects.

The National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education is the only center of its kind. It was established in 1987.

One of the founders was Sister Gemma Del Duca, a Greensburg native and a Sister of Charity who now lives in Israel. She said in a statement from the university: “Ethel LeFrak’s generosity will help with the challenge that remains before us — to join our Jewish sisters and brothers in the great task of ‘Tikkun Olam,’ the mending of the world through reconciliation, understanding and education.”

Mrs. LeFrak and her family are involved in a number of philanthropic endeavors. Seton Hill granted her an honorary doctorate in 1996. (“Good Morning: East,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 04, 2008)

… Year-round, Catholic and Jewish high schools in the [Western Pennsylvania] region have an exchange program in which rabbis visit Catholic schools and priests visit Jewish schools to educate students about their religious differences and similarities. They’ve shared in holiday traditions, such as the Catholic students taking part in a Passover Seder meal.

“Because we share a common history with Judaism, it was thought that we should try to honor that by getting together,” said Don Teti, assistant superintendent for secondary schools in the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh.

Near the holidays, Linda Pricer, principal and teacher at St. Bartholomew Catholic School in Penn Hills, incorporates a lesson about the Holocaust into her eighth-grade literature class.

“It’s mostly for tolerance,” she said. “To teach the students that we have to step up and that if there’s ever going to be a change in this world, we have to do it. When better to teach that lesson than now, during the holidays, when there is so much love and giving?” (“Season gives teachers chance to teach cultural differences,” Allison M. Heinrichs, Pittsburgh Tribune Review, December 4, 2008)

If some wealthy Catholics were to donate millions of dollars (yeah, right!) to Yeshiva University earmarked for the construction of a center for remembrance of the Bolshevik/Soviet Holocaust against Russian, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Armenian and other Christian ethnic groups and how the rabbis’ genocidal,racist teachings paved the road to that Holocaust via Moses Hess and Freemasonry, they would surely build it in the spirit of reciprocity and fairness … wouldn’t they?

In truth, even that wouldn’t bring parity which isn’t even desirable to begin with. ‘Jewish’-Catholic relations is completely irredeemable. A total fraud.

The conference, held every three years, is for teachers and faculty members, mainly at Catholic schools. The intent is to enhance Catholic-Jewish understanding.

The fund will provide annual scholarships for students studying the Holocaust and related subjects.

The National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education is the only center of its kind. It was established in 1987.

One of the founders was Sister Gemma Del Duca, a Greensburg native and a Sister of Charity who now lives in Israel. She said in a statement from the university: “Ethel LeFrak’s generosity will help with the challenge that remains before us — to join our Jewish sisters and brothers in the great task of ‘Tikkun Olam,’ the mending of the world through reconciliation, understanding and education.”

Mrs. LeFrak and her family are involved in a number of philanthropic endeavors. Seton Hill granted her an honorary doctorate in 1996. (“Good Morning: East,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 04, 2008)

… Year-round, Catholic and Jewish high schools in the [Western Pennsylvania] region have an exchange program in which rabbis visit Catholic schools and priests visit Jewish schools to educate students about their religious differences and similarities. They’ve shared in holiday traditions, such as the Catholic students taking part in a Passover Seder meal.

“Because we share a common history with Judaism, it was thought that we should try to honor that by getting together,” said Don Teti, assistant superintendent for secondary schools in the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh.

Near the holidays, Linda Pricer, principal and teacher at St. Bartholomew Catholic School in Penn Hills, incorporates a lesson about the Holocaust into her eighth-grade literature class.

“It’s mostly for tolerance,” she said. “To teach the students that we have to step up and that if there’s ever going to be a change in this world, we have to do it. When better to teach that lesson than now, during the holidays, when there is so much love and giving?” (“Season gives teachers chance to teach cultural differences,” Allison M. Heinrichs, Pittsburgh Tribune Review, December 4, 2008)